LEXINGTON – Carolyn Kyles smiles when she hears them talk about her son these days. Julius Randle, the 6-foot-9, 250-pound All-American who has led the University of Kentucky basketball team into this week's Sweet 16. Randle, the fearsome forward his coach calls an "alpha beast," with his national-best and UK freshman-record 22 double-doubles.

The guy opposing teams swarm – and sometimes tackle – with two or three defenders every time he touches the ball, hoping there's strength in numbers. There usually isn't. After his 13 points, 10 rebounds and six assists helped bounce undefeated Wichita State from the NCAA tournament last week, Shockers coach Gregg Marshall said the 19-year-old Randle is "a grown man, and he comes (at you) really, really hard."

Kyles smiles because she remembers when he wasn't nearly so big and bad, rather little and mad because Mom was schooling him on the court. She played college ball at Texas-Arlington and at 6-foot-2 was taller than Randle until he'd almost reached high school. Raising him by herself in Dallas – Randle's father was not in the picture – she taught him to be tough enough for whatever the world might throw at him.

"I would push him around. He'd fall down and hop up all mad. I'd throw hook shots on him, and it would just kill him," said Kyles, who showed no mercy. "I couldn't feel guilty, because this was the position I was in. I had to be both mother and father. I couldn't be weak. I had to be strong. I couldn't baby him. I had to make sure my kids were strong, show them how to get out there and fight for what they wanted. That's what they saw in me every day."

Randle wears No. 30 because that was her number. She warned him about taking it, though.

"If you're going to get out there and do something with it, yes. But if not, you leave my number alone," Kyles said. "I guess he's done pretty well with it."

Other than a memorable game against LeBron James at the NBA superstar's camp when Randle was 16 years old, his mother is the last person he remembers bullying him on a basketball court. He was still a toddler when she first put a ball in his hand, and he slept with it every night, but he had to be careful as he got older because she'd snatch it away and swish a jump shot in his face.

She'd taunt him, too, especially when she teamed up with his older sister and pummeled Randle and his grade-school buddy in pickup games.

"I'd be so mad, I'd want to fight my sister," he remembers. "They were just bigger and stronger than us, but it definitely put a competitive spirit in us."

Jeff Webster recognized that spirit in Randle the first time they met, almost a decade ago. Webster, a former Oklahoma basketball star, had come to recruit Randle, then a fifth-grader, to play for his AAU team. Kyles was skeptical, didn't want her child to become some basketball mercenary, but then she saw them together.

When Randle lost a youth-league championship game Webster came to watch, the kid was devastated, crying and inconsolable. The 6-foot-8 Webster put one of his long arms around Randle, who at that point didn't even come up to his chest.

"My message to him: If you don't like to lose, Julius, find a way not to," Webster said.

"This calmness came over him. It was a perfect fit from that moment," Kyles said. "Being a single woman raising a young man, I saw it as God bringing Jeff to us at the right time. Julius was about to become a teenager. He totally respected me, but he needed a male figure he could look up to and trust."

And Webster had been all the places Randle wanted to go. He was a McDonald's All-American in 1989, scored 2,258 points for the Sooners, became an NBA draft pick. Webster took over the teaching as Randle outgrew his mom's basketball lessons.

He watched Randle blossom into a McDonald's All-American himself, a consensus top-three player in the Class of 2013, a college star and projected top-five pick in the next NBA draft. Webster is friend, brother and father figure to Randle, depending on what he needs. He's also the harshest critic.

When the preseason No. 1 Wildcats plunged out of the polls, losing nine regular-season games, Webster used it to motivate Randle, who had a habit of dominating one half of a game and disappearing for the other half.

"They lost because you could've done more. You had 12 rebounds but you could've had seven more," Webster would tell him. "My job is always to make him think: Do more. I never want him to feel like the weight of the world is on his back, because it's a team sport, but he also has a job to do."

That job has been harder than Randle expected, he admits now, the spotlight brighter, defensive attention from opponents more intense.

When the losses started piling up, "that was devastating to him," Webster said.

Randle, when Kentucky needed him most, averaged 16 points and 12.5 rebounds in the Cats' first two NCAA tournament games.

Kyles and Webster have signals for Randle. Kentucky coach John Calipari knows about them.

They're all related to the same larger message: "If you don't like to lose, Julius, find a way not to."